All you need to do is look at Antonio Brown’s behaviour before and after this hit. Guy went from one of the hardest working players in the game to a deranged lunatic almost overnight
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That never gets easier to watch.
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Steve Thompson documentary on BBC 2 here. Tough watch.
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I just put that on. Your heart would go to him in fairness.
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Seems like a lovely chap.
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Dementia at 42. Awful.
And four young kids.
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It was a tough watch.
However not a single media outlet has highlighted that he retired, took a big insurance payout (£500k) due to a bad neck injury (was lucky to walk) and then came back playing 18 months later. He paid back the insurance payout. His neck was back to 90% of it’s original movement.
Now maybe the damage was done but I wonder what state he’d been in if he hadn’t come back. I think it was around 2007/2008 at the time and remember it being very odd that a fella that was forced to retire was all of a sudden healthy enough to play again. Maybe that’s a big part of the failing too though.
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Informative. Was not aware of that at all.
Gerry Thornley reporting rugby players 15 times more likely to get Multiple Sclerosis.
This is an article glorifying his bravery at coming back from 2009
And then 2 years later the same neck injury forces him to properly retire
There’s a whole lot wrong with all of this to be fair. Surely this is a fairly important bit of detail that’s been selectively ignored as part of the storyline
You’d have to question his ability to make logical decisions at that point based on what we now know. Would assume he was well tested at the time but looks like they didn’t know what they should have been looking for
He was surely assessed by someone for something. Maybe that’s who he should be suing
I’m not sure the relevance of that at all. It shows his love of competing and his bravery, and that attitude no doubt has cost him. But I’d say every world cup winner has a love of competing and is brave.
I’d say he would have had to but they probably just checked the neck.
World Cup no winner, life destroyed by dementia and all he appears to have to show for it is a modest 3 bed semi somewhere in the midlands in England and an equally modest car. You’d wonder why he bothered.
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He was forced to retire on medical grounds due to a severe neck injury. A neck injury caused by a load of bangs to the head. How could you say it’s irrelevant??
If he’d been getting paid 500k a week it wouldn’t have been worth it to have dementia at 42. So he bothered for the same reason we all played sports for the challenge, camaraderie and sense of achievement. We all did it for fuck all and came out with our hands hanging to us for the most part… The money isn’t near good enough in rugby to play it for that reason alone. With this risk hanging over you now as well you’d really want to love it to play it…
I wasn’t aware the neck injury was due to bangs to the head, I thought it was an injury from being in the front row of the scrum.
Cian Healy was days away from retiring with a neck injury 7 years ago, he is still playing away. I don’t think he has had any brain injury problems thankfully.
How many of ye dads have kids playing Rugby?